<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>less than a full moon by neatmonster</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620538">less than a full moon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/neatmonster/pseuds/neatmonster'>neatmonster</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Walking Dead (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dogs, Foul-mouthed kid, Gen, Hunting, Shane Walsh Lives, Snow, Sweet Shane, Zombie Apocalypse, but no zombies around, shane is old and tired, unlikely friendship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 08:21:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,096</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620538</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/neatmonster/pseuds/neatmonster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Shane lives alone with his dog and makes a new friend.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>less than a full moon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this today and still don't know what prompted it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world felt settled up north, could be the sharp bite that came with living above the border, but as the years passed the less walkers he encountered. Last horde was on a scavenge when he crossed down to Montana four winters back. As for now, he’d only seen two biters in the past few months. He used to lined them up on his fence, like a craft, wire their sack of bones to the chain link like scarecrows to their own kind.</p><p>He didn’t kill them anymore, or bother to look at them, they were slow and dumb for shit. He was the only living person in that place for at least 100 miles.</p><p>People were less usual, the last person living person he saw was his wife. Lost her three years ago due to cancer. They never really got an actual diagnosis, but she knew. It consumed her lungs in less than a year, he wanted to move her somewhere else but it was already too late. As disease started to eat everything inside her, before she went into septic shock, she decided to die on her own terms before she became one of them.</p><p>He wanted to go with her but he couldn’t, he promised her to keep going to find life somewhere else. But that was their house. He buried her in the backyard, felt like he was abandoning her every time he tried to leave.</p><p>Becoming a shadow of the man he used to be, he would wake up later and later everyday, noon it was his usual time now, the routine he had at first was all gone now, lack of food and this cold weather trimmed his body in half.</p><p>When he finally rises, he feels older than the day before. Leaning on the headboard for a few minutes, as a hand run through his beard, he holds the Polaroid photo of him and his wife from the nightstand, feeling like a nostalgic sap for clinging into things from the past, she’d laugh at him for doing that.</p><p>Today was different, food was already skimping and Doug was getting anxious chewing into the same bone at the feet of the bed.</p><p>“What you say boy?” he patted his head, “wanna go outside?”</p><p>Doug whimpered and tilted his head enjoying Shane's fingers scratching behind his ear. He took that as a yes and covered his body with his snowsuit and readied the motor sled.</p><p>It felt like almost summer as he veered through the woods with Doug running by his side, he checked the set of snares he had set up in a three miles radius.</p><p>Recluse to his own thoughts, as he turned off the motor, he thought he was dreaming when he heard another voice, a human voice, small but loud, infuriated in a whimper and cursing like a pirate.</p><p>Eyes darted all over the place, it echoed again, out of sight. He gestured to the animal to look around, and the dog went around the ridge.</p><p>Doug started barking, and he followed the husky’s prints on the thin layer of snow to find him circling around a small girl in a bright red puffer coat with a rifle strapped to her shoulder, trying to haul a buck thrice her size into a wooden makeshift sled.</p><p>“Stupid, dog,” the girl uttered, shifting on her feet, she knelt by the sled and try to get it under the dead animal.</p><p>He watched her for a bit, rooting for her to get it done. She was petite, no more than 10 years old but she seemed strong. Took him a minute to realize he was smiling as his bottom lip cracked with the cold.</p><p>“Need help with that?” he yelled patting on his thigh to get Doug’s attention.</p><p>The dog ran to his side as the girl quickly stood up, getting a hold of her weapon that was already trained at him.</p><p>“No. Go away, old man.”</p><p>She probably had more bullets than him and was pretty good shot cause the animal by her feet only had one shot to the head as far as he could see.</p><p>His hands went up and Doug barked at the girl.</p><p>“Tell you what, I help you with carryin’ that and me and Doug get a leg.”</p><p>“You dog’s name is Doug?” she mocked.</p><p>“Didn’t name him but yeah.” He stared for a while standing still, with her eye fixed on him, like he was his next prey.</p><p>She rolled her eyes, annoyed, and her chin moved pointing at trees behind him, “go on now, old man. I told you to get lost.”</p><p>He put his hands down and started walking backwards, “I mean no harm, if you need help, I live three miles west that ridge,” he gestured, “it’s just me and Doug.”</p><p>When his back was turned, the girl put her rifle down, sighing already dreading to manage that thing on her own.</p><p>He used to feel sorry for kids for having to grow up in this word, but they’re the most fitted now, the ones who only got to experience this side of life are they stronger ones, like this girl. She knew what she was doing and didn’t flinch at his sight.</p><p>He hanged a couple of rabbits he got from the snares on his belt and started the snowmobile, circling around a tree to turn it around, Doug starting barking looking in the opposite direction, taking  glimpse at his back he saw the bright red of her coat as her hand waved to him to come back.</p><p>With a scoff, he drove around and helped her get the buck on her sled that he attached at the back of his own.</p><p>“Do you even know how to skin something like that?” He asked hauling the buck into some sort of storage shed she had next to a cabin.</p><p>“I know alright.’' The girl boasted gesturing at one of the walls filled with smaller animals already out of their carcasses, and meat ready to cook at any time.</p><p>“Jesus, how long have you been in here?”</p><p>“Less than a full moon.”</p><p>His head shook at her words, with a grin in his beard, “less than a full moon, huh? So you’re the reason me and Doug are starving.”</p><p>“Don’t think so.” She said picking a generous amount of sliced meat putting it in a plastic bag for him, “here, for your trouble.”</p><p>“Thank you.” He took the bag from her small hand.</p><p>Then she offered a raw fresh steak to the dog that he refused, turning his head around, looking up at Shane.</p><p>“Nah, he likes it cooked,” so he opened the bag and tossed it with the rest of the meat.</p><p>“Your dog is weird.” Her brow narrowed.</p><p>“Tell me about it.”</p><p>“Is this all for you?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m always hungry,” she shrugged.</p><p>“Don’t we all.” Looking outside the window, “listen, it’s getting dark if you ever need anything-”</p><p>“I know where you are, old man.”</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p> </p><p>Doug started disappearing in the mornings, not that he cared as he was asleep most of the time, but he missed seeing him at the end of the bed waiting for him to start the day.</p><p>After putting the grill on the fire with some toast, he picked up the pot and as he was pouring the coffee into a mug, he saw his dog running after a tennis ball across the front of the house and returning it to the side of the fence he couldn’t reach to see from that window. Then the ball bounced again to the same side and Doug went again after it.</p><p>Felt like someone was playing with his dog, couldn’t be a walker, it only could be the little girl he met a couple weeks ago. Either way, he picked the only gun with ammo left, just in case, and cautiously stepped outside using the backdoor to the yard.</p><p>She was giggling, as he turned the corner of the house he saw the same girl sitting on the other side of the fence with the ball in a hand and the other petting Doug’s snout between the chain link.</p><p>“I like your scarecrows, old man.” She said without even turning her head.</p><p>She was good as she was annoying. He felt old for not realizing where his dog was disappearing before.</p><p>“Already out of food?” he quipped striding to the fence.</p><p>“Nope. I was just bored.”</p><p>“Have you been watching us?”</p><p>“Maybe.” She grinned shrugging, “maybe- I wanted to see Doug again, he’s funny.”</p><p>At last, he was glad to see some innocent wonder left in her eyes when she looked at the dog.</p><p>“You know there’s a house down there better than that shit of cabin you have up there.”</p><p>“I saw,” she stood up, “I don’t know, I’m good up there, more food to catch.”</p><p>That was all there was now, food, you couldn’t survive anywhere without it and she knew it, mastered the craft in those years of her short life.</p><p>“I left a bag by the door. Burn this little fuck a steak from me, kay?” she said friendly giving a final caress to the animal.</p><p>“I was making breakfast, wanna come in and have some toast?”</p><p>She stared back at the vast field covered in white but she could already smell the delicious bread cooking.</p><p>“Okay.” She fixed the strap on her rifle as Shane opened the padlock with the key he took from around his neck and pushed the gate open just enough for her to enter the property.</p><p>Never forgetting his manners, he offered to take her coat from her hands and hanged it behind the front door as she took a seat at the kitchen table, with Doug at her feet, he listened her little voice talking to him as he took the bread out of the fire on the chimney using a pair of tongs, and then threw two large steaks she brought on the same grill.</p><p>Doug ran to the smell of the meat cooking while Shane returned to the kitchen, she was still holding into her rifle with a hand as she propped her other elbow resting on the table.</p><p>“Name’s Shane, by the way.” He told her laying a plate in front of her with two toast.</p><p>“Alicia.” The girl replied, “where did you get the bread?”</p><p>He leaned on the counter, sipping on his coffee, “my wife taught me how to do it.”</p><p>“So you ain’t useless after all, old man.”</p><p>“I ain’t useless after all.” He repeated amused.</p><p>While she ate, he finished his coffee and attended to the food ready for Doug, who fell asleep on the floor probably intoxicated by the delicious smell coming from it.</p><p>He cooked a few more slices as he had given her the ones that were for him, and when he went back to the kitchen, she was already done and snooping around the empty cabinets.</p><p>“If you want anything, you just gotta ask.” He settled a second plate with bread, grabbing one for him.</p><p>“Does the other house have running water like this one?”</p><p>“Pretty much. I- I checked a couple months- moons back.” He corrected using her words, chewing some toast, “you’re thinking about it, huh?”</p><p>“I don’t know- food is good, water could be too. I could always go back up there to hunt.”</p><p>“And you like Doug already, you could take him out for me.”</p><p>She thought about it for a few days as she returned every morning after that to play with the dog and have breakfast with Shane.</p><p>When summer came, he helped the little girl get settled in the house half a mile from his. </p><p>It brought a new spark to his life, started waking up earlier, he secured the fence for her, he knew how to hunt but not like her so she taught him her ways, with Doug always running between both houses, it almost felt like a new family.</p><p>Smiling to himself, he liked to watch them play in the yard with that worn out tennis ball while he had his coffee.</p><p>“Shane, Shane.” She waved rushed from outside, “look!”</p><p>When he looked at her, she showed him a trick she taught the animal. She’d throw the ball way up and he would run and catch it mid-air as it was falling.</p><p>The day was sunny and bright and he wished his wife was still alive to see it.</p><p>She would have loved that.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>